ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

in cars in order to generate unrealistically positive results
in standardized pollution emission tests indicates
problems. The use of ‘e-regulation’ can significantly
improve the regulatory process. However, the opacity
of digital devices, the creation and application of
standards, and the increasing insistence of industry on
strong protections for trade secrets risk undermining
the integrity of fundamental aspects of the complex
compact between citizen and state which underpins
the legitimacy of the post-regulatory state. Drawing
upon the still-unfolding scandal regarding car emissions
testing in the US and Europe, the paper places
the growing phenomenon of e-regulation in an interdisciplinary
context, critiquing the processes.
Paul McCusker: Conceptualising e-government
as disciplinary power
This paper explores the pervasive nature of the surveillance
aspect of e-government systems. Using the
Republic of Ireland’s online tax system as an example,
it will be argued that the data used to populate the
datasets is provided by the users who in Foucaultian
terms voluntarily make themselves subjects to the
system but the basis for control is that the Revenue
Service will routinely access up to fifty different data
sources about behavior and lifestyle choices. The Eircode
system (a postal or zip code) is a further example
of a control mechanism. Both of these systems create
a discourse of normalization and examination, they create
a “field of documentation” whereby knowledge can
be extracted to increase the limits of the disciplinary
power and they also demonstrate the “panoptic” nature
of e-government systems which through both implicit
and explicit means cause individuals to act as if they
are being observed even when they are not.
111 ISLAMIC LAW AND ITS BORDERS
Panel formed with individual proposals.
Participants Ebrahim Afsah
Giovanna Spanò
Lisa Harms
Jonathan Parent
Name of Chair Lisa Harms
Room DOR24 1.601
Ebrahim Afsah: The Empty Fortress or the
Poverty of Islamic Public Law: The Role of Law in
Arab State Failure
The current near collapse of the Arab state system
is but the most recent manifestations of an enduring
failure to adapt to the exigencies of an inescapable
modernization process. At the heart of that systemic
failure is the lack of an effective public law, as Western
legal transplants have not worked and an indigenous
public law based on religious tradition has proven elusive.
Still, contemporary political discourse is dominated
by religious imagery and the apparent inability
to express the res publica in anything but religious
terms. The insistence on the specifically Islamic character
of the polity that has dominated constitutional
debates since 1979 has not produced substantially
better governance outcomes than discredited authoritarian
monarchic or republican systems. Whatever the
philosophical value of the long struggle over Islamic
hermeneutics, the ensuing relatively shallow dogmatic
effort to systematize public law is unlikely to resolve the
enduring crisis of governance.
Giovanna Spanò: Islamic Fundamentalism and
Its Interaction with Migrations. The New Islamic
State of Gambia Case Study: A Paradigm of
Minorities’ Repression
The topic I would like to propose aims to connect
crucial and current issues: the status of protection and
promotion of (gender) minorities’ fundamental rights in
contexts where radical Islam assumes a primary place
in determining anti-pluralist governmental policies. In
particular, my research focuses on Gambia, a Country
oppressed by a controversial political situation, due to
imperialist and colonial influences as well as military
coups, which recently has been officially proclaimed as
an Islamic State. The actual Jammeh’s regime- which
has consciously adopted a tough and severe policy line
to subdue internal and external instances- may result
as a general example to explain and to summarize all
the dilemmas related to an insensitive approach.
Have persecutions perpetrated against (gender)
minorities in the name of religion eminently affected
and encouraged masses’ migration towards the European
continent, for the purpose of gaining international
protection as political refugees?
Concurring panels 159